feeling foreign

Since coming back from London I have felt quite dislocated, like part of me is still in the UK. This is not homesickness  - although of course I miss my friends and family a lot - but more a kind of exhaustion. I am suddenly noticing again the difficulties of being a foreigner and no longer just enjoying its novelty. I don't even mean the problems of not being able to speak the language (which still embarrasses me). This is much more about always being aware of even the most ordinary everyday routines, of nothing ever being possible to take for granted because you never quite know exactly what is going on. And that is tiring.

I assume that some sociologist or anthropologist has studied the phenomenon of being a foreigner, there are probably stages just like growing up or bereavement, in which case I think I am currently moving to stage 2: 'Just wants an easy life'. Except, of course, I don't or I wouldn't be here. And it does mean I have started to take loads of photographs again; have got obsessed with trying to capture faces and interactions, both of individuals and in crowds, with all the added complications that brings of not being seen to obviously take pictures in the packed and jostling Moscow metro.